Page "Medea" Paragraph 13

Before the fifth century BC, there seem to have been two variants of the myth's conclusion.

According to the poet Eumelus to whom the fragmentary epic Korinthiaka is usually attributed, Medea killed her children by accident.

The poet Creophylus, however, blamed their murders on the citizens of Corinth.

Medea's deliberate murder of her children, then, appears to be Euripides ' invention although some scholars believe Neophron created this alternate tradition.

Her filicide would go on to become the standard for later writers.

Pausanias, writing in the late 2nd century, records five different versions of what happened to Medea's children after reporting that he has seen a monument for them while traveling in Corinth.